Seventeen composers at various stages in their careers have been recognized with awards totaling $175,000 from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Candidates were nominated by the Academy’s membership and winners were selected by a panel which included Jack Beeson (chairman), Samuel Adler, Andrew Imbrie, Ezra Laderman, George Perle, Ned Rorem, Joan Tower, and […]

Philip Blackburn, innova directorPhoto by Nick Trotter Doom and gloom forecasts concerning the state of the classical recording industry are so pervasive they’re cliché, but despite the pessimism the McKnight Foundation has seen it fit to award a $1 million grant to the American Composers Forum to endow its innova Recordings label and Recording Assistance […]

In preparation for an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on surrealism, I am in the midst of re-reading André Breton’s first Surrealist Manifesto. I am always a little tickled by his vigorous academic defense—calling upon Freud, Proust, and Pascal—of the games he and his hand-picked disciples played. In a less pretentious, yet equally […]

Greg Sandow I’d like to think new music is thriving. Certainly there are reasons for thinking it is. Last year I served on an awards panel for ASCAP; we looked at hundreds of applications from composers all over the country, all of whom were getting performances, many of them from local performing groups. We New […]

Dean SuzukiPhoto by Ryan Suzuki No matter how you slice it, new music is a tough sell. Composers young and old have a difficult time getting commissions and having their works performed. With limited budgets, concerts are often not well publicized and, as an inevitable result, are poorly attended. How then are composers and new […]

Larry PolanskyPhoto by Jody Diamond Molly Sheridan: I’m first interested in talking a little bit about what first brought you to this project and how you ended up editing this monograph… Larry Polansky: Well, I have been an advocate and scholar of Ruth Crawford Seeger‘s work for quite a long time, in fact for a […]

NewMusicBox, a multimedia publication from New Music USA, is dedicated to the music of American composers and improvisers and their champions. NewMusicBox offers: in-depth profiles, articles, and discussions; up-to-the-minute industry news and commentary; a direct portal to our internet radio station, Counterstream; and access to an online library of more than 57,000 works by more than 6,000 composers.